United And That Taylor Guitar
Did you read that story about the guy who called Zappos and asked the representative where to buy pizza?
The agent was cool. Started doing some research. And answered the caller’s question.
The caller, of course, was a snarky Internet troublemaker. He wanted to see if the legend was true, that Zappos gave free reign to its workers, allowed them to make executive decisions, didn’t limit the amount of time they spent speaking with a specific customer.
Turned out the legend was true.
Let me put this in perspective… This is like a concertgoer in the upper deck complaining to an usher that the Ticketmaster fee is too high and getting upgraded to a luxury box. I’m not sure an usher knows how to think. Or is even aware of who Michael Rapino or Irving Azoff is. You have a shitty experience, but you’ve got no alternative. Or do you?
You see United damaged this cat’s Taylor guitar. To the tune of $1500. And United would not pay for the repair. Dude called for months trying to get satisfaction. But, like Mick Jagger, he couldn’t get any. So, when United told him to call no more, he told the airline he was going to make three videos, delineating his plight.
And there the viral sensation began.
I started getting e-mail on Wednesday. The "Huffington Post" picked up on the story. And then the TV news!
Ain’t that fascinating. The story breaks on the ground floor, amongst the proletariat, and the mainstream news media is last!
Now the song ain’t great. And the video is nothing riveting either (unlike the Evian roller babies, which also started online and spread to TV news:
But the sentiment? A+! Because we hate the airlines and we hate being on hold and we hate people who have no authority to help us out, to bend the rules, to see that our situation has merit and we deserve satisfaction. So word spread virally, because the public was aligned! The public makes stories now, not press agents, not media companies. Oh, big corporations can make a splash, but they can’t insure lasting attention. Look at the networks’ failure rate re new series. Totally abysmal. How about fewer stars and better writing? And a longer commitment, allowing the show to grow? Like music. The vaunted artist development. Not work one record until it goes platinum, but record five until the act gets good!
But what truly stuns me is the lack of access in the music business. The average guy can’t get near Jimmy Iovine. Iovine’s an insider, delivering no access. But now no one is an insider! Everybody’s accessible. Everyone deals with their customers or they pay the price.
Boy is the music industry paying the price.
Every label should have a Twitter account. Where they not only hype product, but answer questions and solve problems. Same deal with concert promoters. This business is upside down. It believes it’s in business with itself, when truly it’s in business with its customers!
Ticketmaster is a front for the artists, allowing them to essentially scalp their own tickets. The losers, the fans!
Major labels say they’re beholden to radio.
But fans are pissed they can’t get a good seat at a reasonable price and go to the black market, otherwise known as a scalper, and are rejecting radio in droves.
Where is the honesty? Where is the transparency? Where is the realization that we lived in a changed world?
Trent Reznor prints his manifesto
not helping himself out directly whatsoever, but it bonds fans to him, because he cares, because he’s open, because he’s playing with them, because he responds.
Can you imagine getting a response from Don Henley? A fan getting a phone call? No one’s interested in his new solo music because he’s too removed. If he changed his game plan, provided access, his solo shows would grow in attendance.
That’s the story today. Not top down marketing, but bottom up.
And you do that by providing a ton of info and dealing with people’s problems. You don’t have to bend over backwards like Zappos and be reasonable to jerks, actually, online, you can call out the jerks, Reznor famously did this, but you do have to respond to people’s problems. Before your image is tarnished. United is faceless. One mistake as a band and you’re finished. Remember Billy Squier? That pink video killed his career!
As for new artists… The reason you don’t know most of the names is they’re growing slowly, their careers are in the hands of their fans. A few acts will break through, and you’ll wonder where they came from. Suddenly fully realized. But there will be ten years of hard work under their belt, and thousands of hard core fans. They won’t want to align with big label hype, that will kill what they’ve got. Which is based on humanity, not bullshit.
United backed down. These companies always back down. Because when you’re wrong, you’re wrong. The labels backed down on DRM, additional P2P lawsuits… Now, we’ve even got reasonable Webcasting rates. Why don’t they realize it’s better to be reasonable from the get-go?
One of 440 stories about this listed on Google now:
